WASHINGTON – The White House yesterday deflected criticism of its proposed Homeland Security Department by claiming it has already been downsized to avoid comparisons with old Soviet-style bureaucracies.

President Bush’s chief of staff, Andy Card, said the FBI, CIA and other critical intelligence agencies were considered – then discarded – when the makeup of the department was under review.

“We did not want to create a Homeland Security Department that would look like the old Soviet-era . . . Ministry of the Interior. This is a Homeland Security Department that will secure the homeland,” Card said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Meanwhile, the presumed secretary of the department, Tom Ridge, warned that “thousands” of highly trained terrorists are just waiting to kill Americans.

“Literally, you have thousands and thousands of people,” said Ridge, who currently is Bush’s homeland security director. “Some of them remain in the United States of America as we speak.”

Ridge, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” also warned that Americans have to prepare themselves for a future in which terror threats are a permanent part of daily existence.

Some lawmakers said that curing communication shortcomings and other goofs by the CIA and FBI will not be eased by Bush’s plan.

“Absolutely not . . . It doesn’t address, I believe, the intelligence problems that we have,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).

In other related developments:

* The risk of bombs in air cargo has grown because the government has been focusing almost exclusively on screening passengers and luggage, according to a yet-to-be-released Transportation Security Administration staff report.

* Months before an agent in Phoenix warned that Muslim extremists were attending U.S. flight schools, the FBI diverted members of its counterterrorism team at the same office to an arson case, agents told Reuters.

* The Coast Guard over the weekend alerted all its units to be on the lookout for terrorists targeting the nation’s waterways.